Explained Highlights: Who is Tetsuya Yamagami, the man who shot Shinzo Abe; why Boris Johnson finally resigned; and more

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi on Thursday (July 7) at the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting. On the sidelines of the two-day meeting that concluded on July 8 in Bali, Indonesia, the two ministers discussed border issues.

The 17th G20 Heads of State and Government Summit will happen in November in Bali. After Indonesia, India will assume the presidency of G20 from December 2022. What is the G20? We Explain

Influential administrator Sepp Blatter and French legend Michel Platini, removed from positions they held in football as chiefs of FIFA and UEFA over allegations that they exchanged fraudulent payments while in power, have been given a clean chit.

The investigations had been going on since 2015 — and after six years, the lack of sufficient proof has allowed both men to escape any criminal charges. Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court delivered the verdict on Friday. Read More

Celebrated US basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in a Moscow court on Thursday (July 7), with hopes of a more lenient sentence, in light of the tense relationships between the US and Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

The two-time Olympic gold medallist has been in custody since February 17, when two vape cartridges containing small amounts of cannabis oil were found in her luggage while she was at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. Cannabis oil is an illegal substance in Russia, and if charged with large-scale transportation of drugs, Griner could face up to 10 years in prison. Read More

Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister of Japan, has died, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK announced on Friday (July 8). He had earlier been unconscious and showing no vital signs after being shot at and wounded at an election meeting earlier in the morning. He was 67.

NHK said, “According to LDP officials, Shinzo Abe, the former Prime Minister, who was shot with a gun during the speech, died at a hospital in Kashihara City, Nara Prefecture, where he was being treated.” Read More

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was reported to have asked the BJP national executive in Hyderabad last weekend to reach out to “deprived and downtrodden sections” in communities other than Hindus, which was understood to be a message to the party to focus on groups such as Pasmanda Muslims in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The direction came after the BJP’s victories in the Lok Sabha by-elections in Azamgarh and Rampur, where Muslims are an important part of the electorate. The party is also thought to have gained some Pasmanda votes in the 2022 Assembly elections, and Danish Azad Ansari, a Pasmanda leader, was subsequently inducted into the second Yogi Adityanath government. Read More

A newly published phase-3 study for the drug sabizabulin, initially developed to fight cancer, has shown that it cuts risk of death by about one-fourth in patients hospitalized with moderate to severe Covid-19. The study – funded and conducted by the drug manufacturing company Veru – was published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Read More

States of Nebraska, Minnesota and Illinois in the US were hit by a storm system called a derecho on Tuesday. As the storm rolled in, winds gusting at around 140 km per hour, snapped power lines and knocked down trees. As the storm hit, it turned the skies green, with even many experienced storm chasers claiming to have never witnessed such atmospheric optics, according to the Washington Post. What is a derecho, how did it turn the US skies green? We Explain

Bengaluru-based pharmaceutical company Micro Labs Ltd, the manufacturer of Dolo-650 tablet, is under the income tax scanner for suspected tax evasion. The tax department is looking at financial records and statements of the company as part of the searches, officials said. Read our explainer to know more

Apple has announced a major change to iPhone security in an effort to make it harder for mercenary spyware firms like Pegasus-maker NSO Labs to target and hack users of the iPhone. This has come in the aftermath of several private cyber offensive companies finding zero-day flaws, and letting their clients — typically government agencies and authorities — to hack into the devices of journalists, activists, dissidents, etc. What is it, and how will it work? Why is Apple rolling out this feature? We Explain

The government on Wednesday (July 6) nominated musician Ilaiyaraaja, track-and-field icon PT Usha, Telugu screenwriter V Vijayendra Prasad, and philanthropist and spiritual leader Veerendra Heggade to Rajya Sabha. The four new entrants to Rajya Sabha belong to four southern states, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka.

Japan will vote in upper house elections on Sunday that have implications for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s grip on the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and his ability to push through legislation. We explain why the poll matters and also take a look at some main policy issues.

The current wave of Covid-19 highlights a high risk of reinfection by the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. Why is this? Researchers analysed the antibody neutralisation capacity of 120 people infected with the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, or with the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Zeta or Omicron (sub-variant BA.1) variants. They found that unlike its predecessors, Omicron appears to be able to evade the antibodies generated by all other variants, the University of Geneva said in a press release. The researchers, from the University’s Centre for Emerging Viral Diseases, and the Geneva University Hospital, have published their findings in Nature Communications. Read More

Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh — both BJP-ruled states — have demanded more wheat in place of rice and asked the Centre to restore their original allocations under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, or change the wheat-rice allocation ratio that was revised by the Union Food Ministry in May. Following a revision in May, wheat allocation under NFSA has been slashed for 10 states, of which UP and Gujarat have demanded a rollback. How much wheat do the states consume, what is the revision, and why? Read More

Boris Johnson’s premiership appeared to be on its last legs on Wednesday (July 6), with a string of new ministerial resignations following those of Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid, two of the United Kingdom’s seniormost ministers, on Tuesday.

Andimuthu Raja, the DMK MP from Nilgiris, said in the presence of Chief Minister M K Stalin on Sunday (July 3) that if the central government did not give Tamil Nadu greater autonomy, the DMK could be “compelled” to revive the demand for a “separate” state.

Raja’s comments come in a period in which the DMK government in Tamil Nadu has repeatedly and vocally disagreed with the policies of the central government, and accused it of undermining India’s federal structure. 

We explain the evolution of demand for ‘Dravida Nadu’.

The Election Commission of India on Tuesday (July 5) issued the notification for the election of the Vice-President of India. The term of office of Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu comes to an end on August 10.

The election is scheduled for August 6, and July 19 is the last date for filing nominations. Neither the NDA nor the Opposition have announced their candidate yet, but Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Steel Minister RCP Singh resigned from their posts on Wednesday (July 6), triggering speculation that Naqvi, in particular, could be the government’s nominee for the election.

So, How is the Vice-President of India elected. We explain

Supporters say it is the world’s most ambitious green investment rulebook and could direct huge sums of money into fighting climate change. Critics say it’s a “greenwashing” exercise that puts the European Union’s climate change targets at risk.

‘Just Stop Oil’, a UK-based group of climate activists, has hit the headlines over the last few months for their rather distinctive disruptions drawing attention to their cause.

Several UK cinemas have banned young people from wearing formal attire during screenings of the recently-released animated film ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ due to unruly behaviour fuelled by a bizarre new trend on TikTok.

The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment — which is investigating the slight differences between matter and antimatter by studying a type of particle called the “beauty quark”, or “b quark” — has observed three never-before-seen particles, CERN announced on July 5.

The three “exotic” additions — a new kind of “pentaquark” and the first-ever pair of “tetraquarks” — to the growing list of new hadrons found at the LHC will help physicists better understand how quarks bind together into these composite particles, CERN said in a release. CERN — Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire — is the original name of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, which runs the particle accelerator complex that houses the LHC, the world’s largest and most complex collider. What are the three new ‘exotic’ sub-atomic particles discovered at CERN.

The all-India June rainfall this year was 152.3 mm against an average of 165.3 mm (based on 1971-2020 data). This is a deficit of 8 per cent and classified as normal rainfall (deviation within 10 per cent).

The monsoon has, however, picked up this month. July is expected to bring widespread rainfall over various parts of the country. June, in general June accounts for 15 per cent of the season’s rainfall. As the first month of the southwest monsoon, it is usually marked by large-scale rainfall variations.

This is mainly because the monsoon currents are getting established as the monsoon makes gradual progress over various regions of the country. We explain why the monsoon is expected to pick up in July. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday proclaimed victory in the battle of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine after months of fighting.

The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) on Monday issued guidelines to prevent unfair trade practices, and to protect the interest of consumers with regard to the levy of service charge in hotels and restaurants. Under the guidelines, consumers can lodge complaints against hotels and restaurants by calling the number 1915. Read our Explainer to know more.

The world’s most powerful particle collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will begin smashing protons into each other at unprecedented levels of energy beginning July 5. Scientists will record and analyse the data, which are expected to throw up evidence of “new physics” — or physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which explains how the basic building blocks of matter interact, governed by four fundamental forces. But what is the Large Hadron Collider? We explain. 

The Centre on Monday said hotels and restaurants can’t force customers to pay service charge. What is service charge? Here is our Explainer, from May this year.

In the last two weeks, Australian authorities have exterminated millions of honeybees in a bid to prevent a potentially devastating parasitic plague affecting the southeast region of the country. Colonies of honeybees have been put under “lockdown” as part of a wide range of biosecurity measures to limit the outbreak. What is the plague, and what could be the effects of the extermination? We explain. 

A batch of 11 Afghan Sikhs arrived in Delhi last week after two persons from the community were killed in a terror attack on Gurdwara Dashmesh Pita Guru Gobind Singh Karte Parwan in Kabul on June 18. The Islamic State-Khorasan Province claimed responsibility for that attack, saying it was “an act of support for the Messenger of Allah”. The attack came days after the IS-KP said it would avenge remarks made against the Prophet by a suspended BJP leader. What is the IS-KP, where does it operate? Read More

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unveil a 30-foot-tall bronze statue of freedom fighter Alluri Sitharama Raju as part of his visit to Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh, on Monday (July 4). The year-long celebrations of the freedom fighter’s 125th birth anniversary will also begin on the same day. As part of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, a campaign to mark 75 years of Indian independence, the government is “committed to giving due recognition to the contribution of freedom fighters and making people across the country aware of them”, said a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office. On the campaign website, the account of Alluri’s life comes under the “Unsung Heroes” section. Read More

Cristiano Ronaldo is undoubtedly one of the greatest footballers of all time. But in his second coming at Manchester United, he couldn’t prevent the club from being an also-ran in the race for a Champions League spot. While his own contribution is endlessly debated, Ronaldo is said to have put in a transfer request, a move which may force United to rebuild again. What are the issues and why is he looking to move on? We explain

? September ?? October ?? November ?#MUFC | #PLFixtures

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) June 16, 2022

Last week, the Reserve Bank of India came out with its latest Financial Stability Report (FSR). The FSR is published biannually and includes contributions from all the financial sector regulators. It is the main document to understand the current status of risks to the stability of the Indian financial system. One of the key observations in RBI's Financial Stability Report that caught everyone’s attention was the growing disconnect between India’s stock markets and the real economy. We take a look at the status of India’s equity markets and their valuation. Read More